It's Not a Religion, It's a Way of Life | Big Think

It's Not a Religion, It's a Way of Life

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Dennis Genpo Merzel Roshi describes his spiritual “technology,” Big Heart Big Mind.

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Dennis Genpo Merzel:

Born in Brooklyn NY, Dennis Merzel grew up in Southern California where he was both a high school and college champion swimmer and All-American water polo player. He earned a Bachelors Degree in Economics from California State University at Long Beach and a Masters degree in Education from the University of Southern California and was a teacher and lifeguard before ordaining as a Zen monk under Zen Master Taizan Maezumi in 1973. Completing formal Koan study in 1979 he became Maezumi Roshi’s second Dharma Successor in 1980, the first being Zen Master Bernie Glassman. He received Inka (final seal of approval as Zen Master) from Zen Master Glassman in 1996, thereby becoming one of a small group of Westerners recognized as lineage holders in both the Soto and Rinzai Zen traditions.

In 1982 Genpo Sensei began teaching throughout Europe and founded the international group he named the Kanzeon (Love and Compassion) Sangha, now centered in Salt Lake City, Utah, with affiliates in France, the Netherlands, Poland, Belgium, Germany, England, and Malta. He has fourteen Dharma Successors, and has given Inka to eight Zen teachers making them Zen Masters. For eleven years, until 2007, he was the President of the White Plum Asanga, the worldwide community comprising all the Dharma heirs of Taizan Maezumi Roshi, their successors, and the many groups they lead.

Genpo Roshi is currently conducting workshops throughout the world. His publications include The Eye Never Sleeps, Beyond Sanity and Madness, 24/7 Dharma, and The Path of The Human Being, and many DVD's. His latest book, Big Mind/Big Heart: Finding Your Way, published in 2007, is also being published in translation in the Netherlands, Spain, Germany, Russia, Poland, France, Hungary, Croatia, Romania, and Bulgaria.

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TRANSCRIPT:

Question: Do you call your spiritual practice a religion?

Dennis Genpo Merzel Roshi:You could call it a religion. I don’t particularly see it so much as a religion, but you could call it a religion. It’s more spirituality, or even more precisely, it’s a way of life. It’s a way to be in the world, to come from wisdom, to act with compassion and love and in doing that, to really be a kinder, nicer, more empathetic, compassionate person in the world. It’s less about rules and it’s less about dogma than it is about a way to live one’s life connected and seeing the interconnectedness to all beings.

Question: Must you believe in God to follow it?

Dennis Genpo Merzel Roshi:No. In fact, I was raised agnostic by my father and was raised as an atheist by my mother, and I don’t believe in particularly in an external God. I believe God, but to me God is the same as what I call Big Mind, which is what the title of my latest book is, Big Mind Big Heart. It’s also the title of the work that I do. Big Mind is when someone allows them self to identify with the mind that has no boundaries, no limits; has no beginning, no end. There’s no birth. There’s no death. That’s the infinite. That’s the internal. That’s what we would call God as the absolute, but I don’t give it the name “God,” although we can. I just call it Big Mind and Big Heart.

Question: Explain Big Heart Big Mind.

Dennis Genpo Merzel Roshi:Big Mind is obviously opening our mind to the infinite, just opening our consciousness to the infinite. Again, I can use best the triangle. So, if the left hand side of the triangle is the more restricted mind and heart: the mind and heart that we encase and we call that the self. It’s limited, it’s finite, it’s contained in our story, who I think I am, who I believe I am, what I would call Genpo—that’s the small mind. All this in the body—what goes on here and in my thoughts my beliefs, my concepts, my opinions, my ideas, my notions about who I am—that’s the limit, that’s the left hand side.

On the other side, Big Mind is when you throw all that out, when you drop all the concepts, all the ideas, all the notions of who I am, all the story about it. Then, I am in that wonder, in that transcendent way where I just don’t know who I am. I’m so big, but there’s no one there to know. There is no subject/object division. There is no one there to say, “Oh, I am this.” There is no here. There is no listener. There is no seer. I am all. I am the whole. I am the infinite. I am the eternal. That’s Big Mind—what we could call the absolute, ....

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